Angels Of Light
by Anotherjaneway
Summary: Straight up, extra long, canon style, Emergency episode. Not telling. It's a surprise. *wink*
1. Chapter 1

The smell of coffee was a siren's call to Nurse Dixie McCall. It was five in the morning at Rampart Hospital and all was well. ::For now.:: she mused, padding soft shoes down the quiet hallway towards the doctor's lounge. She slipped inside of the door nimbly from the shadows, after carefully looking around for any eye witnesses.

Kel Brackett looked up from the stocks page he was perusing. "Come to raid your boss's pantry? Behold the guardian at the gate." he teased, dragging over the tin of Folder's ground coffee into his arms protectively.

Her cover blown, Dixie plopped down into a chair with her painfully empty white china mug plastered in red roses. "I've got a coin for safe passage, Dr. Charon. See if you can route the River Styx up to the administator's office. He needs to forget a few things pronto." she grumbled.

Her doe eyed face was so frustrated already, that Kel relented and got up to pour her the forbidden brew himself. "Oh? Was there something I missed in last week's departmental briefing?"

"So good. This." she sighed, sipping gratefully."I'll say, Kel. How about the staffing budget for starters? Oshiro's way off in thinking that we can get by on his latest dollar figure per month. I outlined clearly to him last month that we need three more nurses on the floor in the E.R. just to keep up on the weekends. Our surrounding population's boomed. Any a.m. traffic jam getting into work shows him that every day. I don't know how Oshiro can't connect dots as obvious as those."

"He probably flies in." chuckled Kel.

Dixie glared at him. "You're not helping."

Dr. Brackett conmiserated. "It takes time to increase any hospital spending. But it'll get there. They're already building new labs and getting another landing pad by the parking lot."

"Whoop de ding. Now we can get more patients faster and test them for longer.  
Look, Kel. I get the whole profits thing. A hospital boils down to being just another business in the long run."

"Yeah, at the mercy of all the pharmaceutical and medical supply manufacturers. What a bandaid costs dictates my salary." he frowned.

"Never thought of it that way." Dixie sighed. "Guess I'm sheltered at being paid hourly. But still, can you rattle the Underworld upstairs and get me a few more bodies to work with? My overtime budget'll thank you instantly."

"You guys have a budget cap?"

"Oh, yeah, Mr. Yearly-Salaried-In-The-Stratosphere. And it's even tighter than the E.R.'s equipment purchasing cap."

"How low?"

"We can hand out six dollars an hour for a brand new nurse fresh out of RN school."

"Ouch! That's insane!" Brackett yelled.

"See what I have to work with just to make a living?" McCall smirked.

"Now I see why you snuck in here for a lake of java. To drown out all your misery."  
Brackett sighed, mulling over the problem. "Tell you what, I'll gather the other doctors together and we'll see what we can do. Now I'm not proposing you nurses go on strike or anything. It's far too soon for that, Dix. What I mean is maybe we physicians can set up a scholarship fund, to pay for fresh nursing graduates."

"That's a nice idea. But that'll take months to implement, Kel. And we've got the whole summer coming ahead of us." McCall said.

"The busy season." Kel grimaced.

"Yep." Dixie said, gulping down a huge mouthful of steamy fortification.

"Hmmm." he mulled. Then he snapped his fingers. "I got it! How about using mutual aid? Don't we have some sort of state program where we can activate staff on calls between hospitals based on immediate arriving case numbers?"

McCall's mouth flopped open in discovery. "We do! Oh, Kel. I completely forgot about that. That loophole may be the answer to everything! For this morning and for every other morning that'll roll in afterwards. Thank you so much for that alternative angle.. I'll get right on it." and she shot out the door, abandoning her empty coffee cup.

"Your welc-" Kel broke off, grinning in amusement as the door shut behind her.

He studied her mug, which was still curling up steam, with a smile.

Johnny Gage was on the payphone, calling around desperately. "Look, operator.  
Don't hang up.. I'm on my last d-" *click* And the phone went dead.  
"Oh, for crying out loud! I'm just trying to find my wallet." he hissed, slamming the phone receiver back onto its cradle.

"Easy on fire department equipment, Gage. We've got a limited budget."

"Ma Bell owns this, Cap. Not us." Johnny told him. He ambled over to where the rest of the gang was happily chowing down breakfast eggs and bacon. "Where's the toast?"

"In the frig. Toaster's broken." Mike Stoker shared. He held out his hand. "Got a few dimes to contribute to the cause?"

"I'm fresh out." Johnny glared. "Didn't you see me over there?"

"Did you check your floorboards in the car?" Hank asked. "When I drop a wallet,  
that's where it goes most often."

"I wasn't that lucky." Gage moped, sinking into a chair and staring at his scrambled sunny sides going cold on his plate. "It's gone. And a million places where I've been last night to check out."

"We can always ask around in between runs." Roy DeSoto suggested.

"Yeah, I guess we can do that. It's not like I had a ton of cash on me. But it was grocery money for a week. I think I'm in for a bit of starving myself at home."

The rest of the gang didn't hesitate. They all reached into their wallets and started pulling out dollar bills and fives to lay on the table in front of Johnny.

"Eat. We've got your back. That's the beauty of the fire department." Cap told him. "Pay us back later. But hurry. You've got three seconds to shovel it in."

"What? Why three-"

EEEoooOOOWWWWWwwwww. The tones wailed from the overhead speaker.

"See?" Chet shrugged. "At least that karma's still working for ya." he laughed,  
sucking in his last gooey egg skillfully from his plate like tea from a saucer.  
"Let's go, Johnny. That one's for all of us."


	2. Chapter 2

************************************************************  
From: patti keiper pattik1  
Sent: Sunday, January 7, 2018 5:26 PM Subject: Drop

##Station 51. Other agency assist at East Harbor Beach. Possible drowning. Cross street McNealy. Time out: 09:44.##

Captain Stanley picked up the alcove microphone after writing down their response address. "Station 51 copies. K.M.G. 365."

Mike Stoker revved up Engine 51 and followed Squad 51 out of the apparatus bay as it made a left turn down the boulevard.

Johnny Gage looked at Roy, who was concentrating on the traffic moving around and away from their lights and sirens. "I wonder why the lifeguards need us?" he asked. "That's way the heck away from our service area."

"Well, it's not associated with a boat or the coast guard would've had a chopper in the air already to meet us at the pierside heliopad. Could be a structural collapse of some kind." DeSoto guessed. "That would involve us for any technical rescue."

Their radio crackled, truck to truck. ##Engine 51 to Squad 51.  
Where we're headed is an ongoing estuary project with experimental tidal water flow. Chief McConnikee told me at the cap's meeting last week that this place is a kid magnet.  
No caves but there are several large cisterns and artificial springs that the city can't seem to barricade effectively enough.##

"10-4." Gage replied. "Well that answers that." he said, hanging up the radio mic again. He startled when an inattentive driver suddenly darted out in front of them from Roy's blindside. "Whoa! Watch him, Roy! The idiot!"

The young teen in the white charger just sped ahead of Squad 51 with a one finger salute at Gage's double horn tap, and disappeared into the crunch of morning rush traffic. Johnny was so worked up, his face was ruddier than usual.

"Get his plate?" DeSoto grinned.

"Sure did." Johnny huffed, still coming down from being startled. "I got it right here." he declared, waving his pocket notebook around. "Too bad we're not equipped with a car phone like Battalion is, or I'd be calling right now to report that teenager."

DeSoto remained sharp and alert as he steered into the open spaces other drivers were making for them, and shrugged. "Just feeling his oats.  
Kids are kids. I've got two teenagers now. And one of them beginning to act just like our driver here. But he's going to settle down fast. Starting today." he chuckled.

"Oh, yeah, how are you going to accomplish that?" Gage smirked.

"I'll let him handle getting his first speeding ticket solo. I've already prearranged that with Vince by telling him my son's route home from school every day. Howard's glad he's going to be a firm lesson, believe me."

"Will it take long for that to happen?" Gage began marveling at this surprise Roy's tough father role coming out of his partner.

"He'll be in jail by tonight most likely. That'll wake Chris up a whole lot.  
I want my honor roll super sweet son back before the sun rises."

"Your oldest is turning into a rebel?" Gage gaped.

"Probably not. Just a few late zits popping out. A girl teased him last week about it and now he can't decide if he's a man or still a boy in her eyes. Driving fast is a direct leftover from their watching a James Dean movie on a date."  
Roy analyzed.

"Who figured all that out?"

"Joanne. She's a good mother like I've been telling you for years. We'd decided as early as our honeymoon, that no kid of ours is ever going to turn bad and stay that way." DeSoto nodded with conviction.

"Whoops. Eyes front." Johnny pointed nervously as the squad got close to the back of a police squad car on silent reds heading to another call in the area.

"I see him." Roy shared a nod with the officer as he let him take the open space in front of them when he saw a hand on a gun as a signal that the policeman was on a still active weapons crime call. "I wonder who's getting robbed today?" he asked Gage.

"It's probably another bank. If so, that would be number six so far this week for California." Johnny replied.

"Glad I'm not a cop." Roy shivered. "A guy could get killed that way."

"You think being a firefighter's all fun and games?" Gage huffed.

Roy didn't even glance at him. "Boy you're full of salty questions this morning. What's eating you?"

"Nothing. I'm... well, ...okay. I lost my wallet because I think a date got me a little drunk last night." Gage confessed uneasily, focusing inwardly on himself in acute embarrassment.

"What a cougar." DeSoto chuckled about his partner's mystery lady.

"She was my age! But yeah, she took advantage of me. The whole nine yards. Are you happy?" Gage frowned.

"No." Roy said levelly. "You don't have to see her again if it was... ..rape." he whispered,  
looking away to give his buddy some pride.

"Sex with that woman was entirely mutual, Roy. I just...can't remember it."

"That's a first." DeSoto said straight faced. "So that's what's really bugging you?"

"Yeah. A whole lot." Gage said, leaning on the open window frame with an elbow as he rubbed his face.

"Try not drinking next time. Doesn't take much alcohol to cloud the mind in the heat of the moment. For me, that equals about...two beers." DeSoto shared.

"Two beers? Why I can... well. I really don't like alcohol. But this chick said she wouldn't go out on our date without sharing a giant margarita from Morrie's."

Roy just grinned slyly. "She tipped the bartender to double pour your tequila.  
That's a really old trick to watch out for, Johnny. That's why you should always get any drinks for the both of you on any date."

"Okay, already. Not too proud of myself. I let myself get stupid." Gage slumped.

"Over a girl. That's easy to do, Johnny. We're men." DeSoto told him in an attempt to cheer Gage up.

Gage chewed on that a while. Then he said. "Thanks for understanding, Roy."

Roy's copper hair flashed in the wind as he looked over at Johnny.  
"No problem. But if I were you, because she used drunk bedding on ya, I'd make doubly sure she wasn't the one who took your wallet." Roy said mildly.

"No chance of that. She's native. We don't steal from each other. Maybe our women can be a little domineering at times.. but that's... kind of attractive."

"Then think of how your date went in a new light. You were her conquest in battle.  
Sure sounds like she pulled a counting coup move on you to me."

"I was the enemy?" Johnny's mouth dropped clear open, revealing crooked teeth.

"You're not that easy to get to like at first." DeSoto frowned, being totally frank.  
"You come across as being all over the board on any first impressions."

Johnny finally relaxed. "I think I can live with that, Roy. But boy, I tell ya, I'm sure going to be the man in charge the day I finally get married." he said,  
snapping his notebook against his palm with a smack.

"Good luck with that." Roy sighed, speeding up a little as the bulk of traffic disappeared from their direction of emergency travel. "Joanne rules the house, like a boss."

Station 51 pulled up sharply at the sight of a park official wearing a red emergency vest. The man was soaking wet.

"Over here!"

"Can you reach the victim?" Cap asked, throwing on his turnout coat and opening a compartment door for a wench, life belt harnesses and a set of canvas flotation collars.

"No. He's too far down into the runoff grill. We don't have anything to cut away the rebar blocking the way."

"Mike, Chet, Marco... grab the sawsall, jaws and a few crowbars. Roy, Johnny. We've an inaccessible entrapment." He told his paramedics when the ran up to join them.

"Is he still alive?" Gage asked the ranger.

"He hasn't turned dark blue yet if that answers the question. That water's sun warmed."  
the park man said, turning around to show them the way to the site at a run.

"Brownie points for no hypthermia." Roy muttered as he and Gage grabbed up full immobilization and resusitation gear. "But he's down in a hole. Might have extremity trauma on top of water ingestion."

"That'd be my guess too." Johnny said, snatching up the Datascope defibrillator and a stokes basket from the back hatch.

"Let's go!" Hank hollered. "It's not far!"

It was like they had stepped deep into wild scrubland even though they could still hear the snarl of thousands of commuters whizzing by on the expressway. Birds sang from tall mesquite stands and thick green moss blanketed the ground.

"Wow, I'd say this project's working out. It's like a jungle in here." Gage snapped.

"That's why the kids always come, we think. They're from the city, they've never seen parkland this lush before." the ranger shared.

"So we were told." Hank replied. "How much farther?"

"About fifty yards." the ranger answered, hustling up a ridge that flanked an honest to goodness waterfall that was splashing down into the concrete box of the L.A. river bed far below. "I've sent my partner to the road to go meet an ambulance. They're already on the way."

The gang and the ranger finally arrived to a green arroyo, ringed with tall eculyptus trees and spanish moss. Below was a pond, the source of the waterfall, that sported lilypads, ferns and frogs.

The storm grill in question was nestled in between natural bedrock boulders like a door canted forty five degrees from the vertical. There were signs that the soil around the edges had been dug away with the two garden shovels lying on the creek's banks.

DeSoto pushed by the ranger and aimed a flashlight down into the drain.  
"He's not alone." Roy shared as he caught flashes of pale skin and red shirt in the water flow cascading down around the unconscious boy's body.

He could see their victim was lying in between two grills, the one in the hill blocking their access and the second, acting as a catch,  
holding him up from what looked like a very long plummet down into darkness.

The ranger was surprised. "What?!"

"There are two tools lying on the ground over there. You can't tell me this boy dug this hill out using two hand shovels at the same time."

"Holy cow.." the young park official moaned. "I had no idea. I thought we were going to be fine on this one."

"What do you mean by that?" Cap asked, setting a hand on the ranger's shoulder to get his attention. "What other kinds of obstacles are down there besides these two drains we can see?"

"Underneath this short drain, lies an underground lake. It's deep.. There's no light. And..there's no wall ladder anywhere, leading back up to this grotto."

Roy felt sick to his stomach. "Maybe his friend got scared and ran away. Who called you?""

"Nobody." said the ranger. "We saw the boy here squeeze inside and fall, just as we got here to do a water quality check on this cistern."

"Do you think a second kid got through first ahead of him?" Gage clarified, moving out of the way so Stoker and the others could start force cutting the grill bars open.

"I can't see where else another kid might go. We're inside the intersections of four freeways which box in this marsh project area." the park man replied.

"How far down is this lake?" Chet grunted, helping Marco cut steel in a fly of sparks with the sawsall's blade. The cold fire of molten metal splattered against his safety glass visor.

"Five stories." the ranger replied reluctantly. "It's... a tidal cave with a network of underwater tunnels that siphon themselves out to sea with the tide twice a day."

Roy looked at his watch reflexively for the time and saw that it was low tide currently, on the beaches.

"Oh my God. The outflushing siphoning's already begun."  
cried the ranger. He sat down hard on the ground, in total shock.

"I'll go call the L.A. recovery dive team." Cap said softly, running back to Engine 51.

"The second child might still be alive down there." the park man yelled,  
getting angry.

"Not from a fall from that height. Not with broken bones." Hank told him. "And not with that kind of undertow current force working."

DeSoto shoved the death out of his mind and got to work fast for their survivor. He and Johnny set up suction and got a short spine board ready with plenty of splints and gauze wrap to secure the boy's probable injuries.

"I'll go in. I'm thinner." Johnny said as soon as the grill was peeled aside by the others. "Tie me off and snub it off that tree! " he said, fashioning a sliding slip knot off of his life belt's large caribiner snaffle.

Cap, Marco, Chet and finally the ranger all got onto his rope while Roy got onto the biophone set up in a thicket of reels a short distance away.

"Give me some slack!" Johnny hollered as he shoved a pair of goggles down over his eyes to protect them from the streams of water raining in from the seeping spring just outside. He clutched a peds size oral airway in between his teeth as he repelled down into the soaking darkness of the cistern chamber.

"Rampart, this is Rescue 51. How do you read?" DeSoto hailed,  
plugging in the biophone's radio antennae swiftly. There was no immediate reply. He glanced up at the ranger. "Can you radio out from here on your handy talkies?"

"Oh, yeah. The repeater's right there at the top of the ridge. No problem."

Roy was halfway into his second hail when Nurse Dixie McCall responded over the airwaves. ##Unit calling in please repeat.##  
she said.

"Rampart this is Rescue 5-1. At the scene of a pair of pediatric falls and aspirant water ingestion. One victim is a fatality. The second is inaccessible for another few minutes. Gross cyanosis on the second male under age ten, is not evident on a visual. Please stand by."

##Standing by 51.## Dixie clicked the pause button on the incident recorder in the glass alcove room where she was, and quickly got on the red phone that was set on the wall above the communications equipment table.

"This is Nurse McCall. We've a child drowning with trauma coming in with 51's. Have Respiratory and a trauma surgeon ready for Treatment One a.s.a.p." she told the hospitral operator. "Thanks."

Back at the estuary project the gang was tightly ringed around the ground hole Johnny had passed through, holding his life line in firm grips.

A new crew of rangers had arrived and they were actively sandbagging the creek to shut off its active fresh water flow into the cistern where the firefighters were working. Hank had no idea how they had brought in the bags of sand until he saw the horses rigged with carrying racks, standing in a clearing.

Johnny looked up at Chet, whose face was the only one he could see above him in the sunlight through the earthen drain hole. "Kelly, toss me down your flashlight!"

Chet pulled it from his jacket pocket. "Ready when you are!" he hollered back, turning it on so it could be seen.

Gage, gasping as he hung on his rope next to the boy he could feel through his gloves, shouted back up. "Okay. Drop it!"

He caught the muddy torch deftly and quickly shoved it under his arm so he could see his patient's head under its light. He hadn't even checked for a pulse before he inserted the oral airway into the boy's mouth and between his teeth. He saw steam curling in and out of the Berman's tube aperature. "He's still breathing.  
Okay for now."

Gage smelled vomit in the air. And blood. "He's injured. Let me stop any bleeding before you belay down that other belt."

With the torchlight pushing away the darkness above the distant underground lake swirling far below their feet, Johnny located serious issues. "Arterial blood from the left hand." He immediately took up a radial pressure point to staunch it enough so he could wrap it up with dressing gauze from his pocket. "Two tib fib fractures of the lower legs." he mentioned of the pair of backward facing sneakers he could see in outline. "Left sided abdominal distension, no penetrating wounds. Putting on a collar!"  
he shouted back up.

He no sooner fastened the last velcro strap around the boy's neck when the soggy dirt around them began to give way in a river of mud down on top of them.

Photo: Dixie turning to another nurse, giving orders at the base station.

Photo: Station 51 driving through the L.A. riverbed.

Photo: Cap shouting commands to the gang offloading Engine 51.

Photo: Roy running with an oxygen apparatus by trees.

Photo: Johnny looking muddy and stressed inside of a hole.

Photo: A hillside waterfall creek.

Photo: Johnny looking mad in the squad.

Photo: Gage working with a resusitator and a little boy inside of a water stream.

Photo: A park ranger looking worried beside his work jeep.


	3. Chapter 3

From: patti keiper pattik1  
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2018 4:50 PM Subject: Tick, Tick.

Johnny reached for his plastic bag wrapped handy talkie and pressed talk.  
"Cave in! We're getting buried here!" he shouted, wrapping his legs tightly around the boy to keep him from falling into the underground lake far below.

"Gage?!" Cap yelled down into the cistern's access hole. "Snub his line.  
Jump on it! Hold it still! We got you!"

Chet, a park engineer, Marco and Cap all threw themselves on Johnny's rope and kept it from moving while the paramedic struggled to hold both his weight and the boy's sodden, limp body's, against the strong flow of mud raining down on top of them.

"You all right?!" Roy DeSoto shouted, lying belly down with his arms and legs spread wide to evenly distribute his weight. Roy started gasping as he aimed a flashlight down deep to see how bad the earth had given way. "Johnny! Answer me!"

Dr. Joe Early was making his rounds casually. No Urgent Care patient as yet had needed his services as the on call family physician in the E.R.. He was enjoying the peace and quiet inside of the glass alcove room as he sipped a cup of coffee, his routine floor charts cradled lightly in the other arm.

Dixie McCall, at the desk in the busy waiting area, glanced sidelong at him through the window and smiled. She got up off of her stool and entered the base station to visit. "Well, well, well. Look who's hiding from the rest of the world in here."

"Dixie... Me? Hiding? That's more Dr. Brackett's forte than mine. He actually disappears out of anyone's sight when he gets away. I'm still keeping an eye on things. And my laid back, coffee drinking mind, is still working on these." he said, hefting up his case load charts crooked in his elbow. "Our illustrious boss's. He's already made his clean get away after dumping them on me."

"I was joking, Joe. Keep chugging your name sake. You're gonna need it in about twenty minutes." McCall sighed.

"Oh?"

"It's 51's. They've got a multi-trauma pediatric coming in from a park cistern fall."

"Not another one." Dr. Early frowned. "I can't understand why the city won't put up a fence around that wetland project like a good little municipality."

"That's just it." McCall remarked, grabbing up her own cup of coffee from the counter near the paramedic receiver. "That land's co-owned by Torrance,  
Carson, AND the city of Los Angeles because of shared water rights. Each keeps passing the buck on who's gonna raise the funding to erect barriers around that area's public parkland. There's been issues of access that aren't being addressed. For instance, which city's going to be getting the pay gate to enter the park? There can only be one public entrance in by state law. And everybody wants the visitor fees to collect as taxes." she shrugged.

"You sound knowledgeable." Joe grinned wryly.

Dixie groaned, frustrated.  
"Have to be, Joe. I live right next to the d mned place. I'm getting sick of seeing coroner's wagons leaving the park every time a child dies in there for stupid reasons."

"Why can't the cave cisterns be gated off?"

"Because transients and vagrants jumping off the railroad lines keep cutting open the grill bars to get in there to bathe or drink from the collection pool at the head of the subterranean pipe entrances leading to the underground lake."

"Hmmm. Expensive. And that kind of vandalism falls under the jurisdiction of the.." Dr. Early surmised.

".. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who pays the park rangers peanuts just to patrol the place. They don't have the funds to keep forking out repair bills to the welders every other day when bums break in using stolen train yard tools." Dixie explained.

"Catch 22." Joe said. "My guess would be that even with the fencing, people would still get in there because of all the unusual green and running creek water so far from the mountains."

"No bet." Dixie nodded, setting down her coffee cup thoughtfully. She got a sudden chill that made her rub the hair down over goosebump flesh on her forearms. "Oooo. Something's not right." she murmured, glancing around the alcove room.

"Uh oh." Joe murmured.

Both their eyes fell on the live fire department scanner that had been turned down by someone intercepting a paramedic call earlier in the morning. McCall turned it back up again.

The county speaker, was red lit and active.

##U.S.A.R. 103 copies, Engine 51. We'll rendevous at the outtake with our divers at cave lake level. We'll swim in to orient beneath your trapped man. Maybe he can't respond to you because his hands are full hanging on to the male child victim.##

##There's that.## came Captain Stanley's voice. ##But that can't explain why he can't bounce on his lifeline rope to signal up to us that he's fine. From what we can tell from up here, the mudslide's over.##

##Copy that. We'll scope his position with hand held search lights. Maybe we'll be able to see what the issue is from our end down below.## came the reply from U.S.A.R.'s lieutenant in charge.

##Appreciate it. You already know about the second victim fatality. He's the reason why you were called to make your recovery. Keep in touch.## Stanley transmitted.

##10-4. I've two going in right now. Let Accountability know for us?##

##Appreciate it, 103. Will do.## Cap answered.

Both nurse and doctor grimaced, while they continued to listen to the chatter.

"May Heaven protect little boys and brave paramedics." McCall whispered.

"Who?" Joe asked her, about the firefighter's identity.

"It's Johnny Gage. He's the one they always send down on calls like this. It's because he's so scrawny."

Dr. Early scowled. "We should fatten him up before the next time. Why should he take all the risks? He's not a U.S.A.R. specialist." Early grumbled fervently, fiddling with the rings on his fingers.

"That day's coming. For all of them." Dixie shared. "I heard this from his captain."

"Good. They'll have better gear and equipment to work with that way." Joe Early picked up the white phone receiver on the wall. "I'm calling in a second surgeon solely based on your dimple skin hunch, Dixie."

"Why do I always have to be right?" she nodded at him, acknowledging the plan, with unhappy eyes. ::Stay smart, Johnny.:: she wished mentally.  
::Keep watching and using that spastic head of yours. It just may bail your butt out of this one.::

A driver on the 405 going sixty slammed on his brakes and laid on the horn as the bolting form of a shaggy dog shot past him across all the lanes of traffic for a nearby hillside next to the L.A River bed. "Watch out, you crazy mutt!" he hollered, recovering control of his semitruck in a haze of blue white rubber tire smoke.

Undeterred, the stray dog kept on running straight as an arrow up a steep incline, and into a park canyon as if his life depended on it.

The knee high gold, black and gray coated, brown eyed dog panted heavily as he made a beeline for a distant pair of fire station trucks he could smell in the distance.

Station 51's.

Chet Kelly heard the commotion long before he saw the cause. "What th- Marco, watch your six, there's an animal coming like a bat outta Hell behind us."

Lopez turned and gripped his jacket haligan as a defense tool as he whirled about to face it, crouching low.

A bush exploded in a shower of leaves as Boot, their once station dog rushed up and past them to the hole where Johnny Gage's rope stretched taut in the grip of three firefighters. He started barking frantically there, without cease.

"Boot? Heya, pal! Long time no see." Cap grinned quickly. But then Boot's urgency wiped the smile completely off his face. "Okay. What's going on down there with Johnny? We heard from him just a minute ago before it cut off. Nothing good?" he asked the dog.

Boot looked up only once at Hank and the others before he started digging at the dry earth surrounding the gap leading into the partially caved in cistern drain, at a fever's pace, whining loudly.

"Wow. Who's this?" asked the park ranger. "He shouldn't be in that area. The earth's still like quicksand from that mudslide."

"Let him be. His instincts are solid. That's Boot, a stray we know to be a very good rescue dog." Cap told him, listening close to his handy talkie while peering down into the collapse hole.

Stoker added more, rechecking the tie off he had made fast on Johnny's rope. "Ran away from us two years ago to hole up with another fire station. He hits every one we've got in rotation and hangs out for a few months or so with each. Only goes far and long outside when there's somebody in trouble. It's how we met over a decade ago."

"D mn." cursed Hank, as L.A.'s continuous hail to Gage continued to go unanswered. "Why isn't he talking? The radio's not washed out or we'd be hearing feedback over our channel from a speaker short." he told everybody.

Roy DeSoto shouted down into the darkness with a retrieved megaphone.  
"Johnny!? Can you hear us? U.S.A.R. will be staging down below in three. If you can't talk to us, see if you can signal them instead!"

Gage was in semi darkness and holding himself and the gravely posturing injured boy very still in a grip with both his arms and his legs. He had long ago ripped out the battery to his radio and flung it down into the lake. Once the mudslide had ended, he had found himself cocooned in the soft papery weight of hundreds of old TNT dynamite sticks. ::One spark or violent jarring motion, could set them off.:: he realized. ::They must have cascaded out of that antique gold miner's chest hanging above us once the mud stopped moving. It's only a miracle that we haven't blown ourselves and everybody else within a hundred yards up sky high yet.::

He could feel the unconscious boy dying in spasms against him while the growing stench of rotten gun powder began to burn his eyes and nose::Not like this. Oh, please.::

Before the cave in, Johnny had stopped the boy's hemorrhaging from his hand and legs.  
But it had only been afterwards, when he had seen the fatal signs of brain stem compression in his eyes. He felt the agonal Cheyne Stokes pattern of breathing, begin. "Easy, little guy. I am so sorry I can't save you." he gasped. "But you won't be alone when you go. I'll be here with you, only a heartbeat away. Try not to move." he said, struggling to contain the boy's subconscious wriggling, physically, with gentle restraint. "You can't move one inch." Gage panted. "It's not safe at all."

Another unstoppable flutter of falling TNT sticks rolled out and fell on top of their heads. Gage flinched, holding his breath, waiting for their last moment of life together. Then the deep silence returned, as a leaking, very sticky dynamite stick came to rest against his cheek. It now ended, any further out loud talking, with finality.

Above, Boot continued to dig. And the gang's worry began to build.

"He's got his flashlight, a haligan tool. That oxygen we lowered down to him."  
Roy listed off in another assessment of their situation with Cap. "He's probably just too busy using them. Especially if the kid's stopped breathing."

"Search probe. Let's use that, Cap. Then we can see for ourselves what's going on."  
Chet suggested.

"Get on it." Hank told him. "And move the trucks back. We don't want to trigger another slide down there. I'm calling for heavy excavation equipment. We're literally in over our heads." Cap hailed Headquarters. "L.A., Engine 51. Request Heavy Crew Twelve to our location. Aproximate rope distance down to our victims is seventy feet next to a full creek bed."

##Engine 51. Rolling Siphon Nine to handle your water flow. E.T.A. 10 minutes.##

"Copy the additional. Respond two ambulances in a standby."

##10-4, Time out: 12:59.##

It was only moments when Kelly ran back with the powered case containing the search probe equipment. He started assembling it quickly, adding lengths of fiberglass pole to the camera eye assembly tip's cup.

"Sure wish we could read his brain." Chet remarked to Stoker as he worked.

"What? Gage? We already know what he's thinking. He wants out of there. That and he really wants that kid to survive long enough to make it to the hospital where truly skilled hands better than his can really save the day on a more permanent note." Marco chuckled.

"I meant Boot. Look at the way he's staring at us right now." Kelly clarified.

The dirt encrusted fire dog was no longer moving soil out of his hole. He was actually glaring at Chet and Marco, and rumbling a little.

Marco outright laughed. "He's telling us to hurry up so he doesn't have to rescue Johnny and the boy all by himself."

That cracked a smile out of the rest of the gang for a few seconds.

"That's peculiar." Hank agreed with Kelly about Boot. "Maybe he ate some bad chili." he joked.

Boot jolted to his feet, still keeping eyes on Marco and Chet intently, watching their every move...until they started for the cistern tunnel opening. Then he let out an actual full throated growl and launched himself onto the probe pole,  
biting down and tugging hard.

"Hey, Boot! Stop it right now. No time to play! Gage is in trouble big time!"  
admonished Marco. Kelly actually threw a glove, hard, at Boot's face.  
Boot yelped, but didn't let go until he literally dragged Marco and Chet away from Gage's gap by the search pole.

Cap held up a hand, "Wait a moment. Boot. Hey, boy. Is it this you don't want?" he asked, kicking the pole's handle.

Boot promptly dropped his grip on the probe's end and barked once, immediately ignoring it, even the part lying painfully across his front feet.

"Drop it, Kelly. You, too, Lopez. Let's see what happens." Hank guessed.

They did so.

Boot immediately returned back to digging in his hole next to the rescue rope threading down into darkness.

Hank frowned, eyeing up all of his men. "That.. was a firm dog's no.. in my book. Do we all agree on that?"

Roy was looking at Boot as if he had grown a third eyeball. "That was odd for him. What does he know that we don't?"

"I think we'd better find out a.s.a.p." Cap reasoned, squatting down by Boot to soothe away the dog's visible resulting guilty qualms, about forcifully correcting his firefighter companions. "Okay, Boot, you win.  
No probe. D mned if I know the reason why not."

Fifteen minutes later, as Twelve was warming up their backhoe and extension crane, there came a shock.

Boot had reversed out of his dig tunnel, while the department heads talked rescue, carrying a familiar object of danger, which they all knew too well.

"Whoa! Oh, G*d, no, boy! Put it down!" startled the park ranger who tripped over backwards and started scrambling desperately away from a very patient, seated Boot who was holding a dusty piece of dynamite in his muddy jaws.

The gang equally reacted and ran away from Boot swiftly. From behind the safety of the fire engines, Kelly shouted. "Boot, put that down."

"In the creek, boy." Stoker added, gasping in fright. "Go bury your bone in the creek, like you used to do with them in your water bowl at home.  
Bury your bone, Boot. It's yours."

"He does what?" Kelly asked.

"Chet, will you just shush!" Hank hissed.

"Boot. Now. Boot." Mike prompted the dog softly, forcing a reassuring smile that he didn't feel, onto his face.

Casually, Boot carried his lethal load past them and down the hill to the creek bank where he dropped it with eminent doggy satisfaction, into the swift current. Immediately, the unstable nitroglycerin and decaying blasting powder soaked through as it sank, and was rendered harmless.

Everyone present dropped to their knees in relief and shock. Hank rattled out new orders. "Shut your radioes off. All of these vehicles, back five hundred feet down the road. Stoker, get the bomb squad here pronto. H*ll, tell everybody! We might have a large quantity of miner age TNT artifact in the cistern tunnel if Boot found that one up here buried so shallow."

Roy glared at the ranger. "Don't you people survey a little first before building a whole new underground water system?!"

The man was visibly shaken. "Not my department. That's..."

"The Department of the Interior, yeah, I know." Cap sighed in irritation.  
"Safe buffer! Red zone, yellow zone, green zone! Got that! Nobody in the first two without full blast armor protection!"

"Now we know why Gage shut his mouth so fast." Chet said quietly.

"He must be scared sh*tless." Roy fussed, beginning to pace behind the bulk of the engine. "I sure wish I could talk to him. Oh, no, Boot.  
Don't go back. Hey, no!" DeSoto leaped in vain to try and stop him and missed. He was forced to retreat back to the safe zone while Boot returned to his aggressive digging.

Hank was deadly quiet. "If he doesn't stop doing that by the time P.D. gets here with the bomb squad, I'll have them take him out."

Kelly qualmed. "Oh, Cap. They don't have to shoot him. He's just trying to help out."

"Would you bet your life on a thirteen year old dog's instinct for survival?!"  
Stanley asked in a hiss of anger.

Chet held his tongue.

"I didn't think so." Hank sighed in a rush, sucking in a huge, stressed filled breath.

"But.." Kelly minced, totally overwrought about Boot.

"Go back behind the trucks now, Chet. You're gonna wait, safe, like the rest of us."

"Cap, I can't just l-"

"MOVE, Kelly! And that's an order!" Hank roared.

Photo: Boot, barking, in a close up shot.

Photo: An old crate full of dynamite.

Photo: The gang setting up ropes and pulleys.

Photo: Gage, pinned in a hole.

Photo: A washed out road caused by a mudslide and a backhoe.

Photo: Dixie and Kel looking worried in the paramedic base station.

Photo: A cave in, filling with brown water.

Photo: USAR-1 Truck 103's rear truck logo.

Photo: A USAR chief on radio.

Photo: Cap talking to his men urgently.


	4. Chapter 4

From: patti keiper pattik1  
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2018 7:22 PM Subject: Booted

::Johnny...:: ::Johnny...:: came a mental touch inside Gage's mind. It was a memory. One that Gage had thought was long lost.

"Mother?" he whispered without sound. He smiled, and some of the incredible stress pressing in on him eased greatly. His mother had been dead for some years. He hadn't thought of her since her funeral that he had attended, when he was nine. It was a relief to find out that he could still recall the sound of her voice even after so many years.  
::I know why I'm thinking of her now. There's a cold corpse pressing up against me.:: he acknowledged, sadly. ::Feels just like her hand did when I touched it back then. I must have blocked that out until today.::

He didn't know how long it had been since his victim had died, only that he had. Quietly and peacefully. ::It couldn't have been too long ago. There's still oxygen left in this tank.:: Johnny analyzed. He felt his muddy fingers carefully turn off the valve to save it for himself if it was needed. He wanted to release the safety snaffle connecting himself and the boy, to let him fall away and take off some weight from off his life rope, but the danger of the dynamite sticks jumbled around him made that a pipe dream.  
So the paramedic endured the smell of aging escaped urine, bowel and the boy's souring blood, breath by breath.

::My life is what matters now.:: he reaffirmed. Gage closed his eyes to save his energy to fight against the chilling mud and water trickling steadily down his body.

Dimly, he heard the sound of splashing below, but he didn't see the powerful spotlight being aimed up the bottom end of his crevassed hole, two hundred feet below, from the underground lake.

##U.S.A.R. 103 to Engine 51. We think we've spotted where your man is.  
There's dozens of sticks of old TNT floating in the water around Code F Victim One. Must have been a cache decades ago inside of a hidden old mine. No signs of movement, but there is only light water and mud falling into the lake. Plenty of breathing room for your man up there. He must realize what's happened. We found his radio battery tied up in a bag, floating nearby.##

"So, still thinking but unable to take any action. Got it. Heads up on a potential risk to your divers in the area. A dog is digging, on his own,  
trying to reach Gage, our paramedic. Watch yourselves. We can't stop him until P.D. arrives, if it comes to that." Hank replied on their frequency.

The lieutenant diver in the lake swiftly hand signalled the others to return to the surface with their burden, adding the danger gesture to warn them on the reason why. They immediately swam away and the lieutenant in touch with Cap, followed. As an afterthought, he put his own lit up flashlight inside of the battery bag, aimed up so that some of its light might reach 51's trapped man and give him encouragement while he waited for rescue. ##Copy that, 51. Retreating out of the red zone.##

Roy almost tripped himself getting back to Hank by Engine 51. "Foam, Cap.  
Fill up the hole. Johnny'll figure it out and use that O2 to breathe. And then whatever Boot does under the stuff, won't ignite ignite any sparks."

Cap got excited. "TNT's not crude oil, but it is soluable. Just might work minimizing the explosion risks. Good thinking, Roy." He got on his radio to U.S.A.R. and L.A. ##Engine 51. Send Foam 127 to our location. We're going to lay some down as a safety measure.##

##Will do.## came the reply, echoed by the dispatcher.

Five minutes later, Cap got Station 127's men gathered in a group.  
"Not asking you to do this without volunteering. We need to enter a red zone around unstable TNT buried in a hill. Our man's stuck in that cistern hole,  
unable to help himself because of it. What I need are two foam nozzles placed in two holes. One, in that dog's, and the other in my paramedic's, who's about eighty feet below on a life line with a pediatric victim, down in the second hole. Will you do it? We're guessing there's enough old explosive down there to vaporize a quarter block around that epicenter."

Nobody on 127's backed away from the task. "Understood." said their captain, waving them on to carry out the measure. "My men know the risks and will take them."

*We can catch the dog." a firefighter offered.

"You won't be able to. He's a street mutt with a rescue bent. The best thing we can do is make things safer around him while he goes to town. Time's the main factor. The faster we lay the foam, the less chances there will be for us getting blown to bits by that TNT, while we get my man and the last boy out."  
Cap shared.

"Beats the H*ll out of waiting for the bomb squad. They'll take all day securing that stuff." 127's captain sighed.

"Now you see the problem. Our golden hour for that boy is passing. He has major injuries." Hank said.

"Say no more. This is the course we have to take, Hank. D*mn police department.  
Wish they'd speed up their procedures a little when it comes to incendiaries." his colleague captain muttered.

Johnny thought he was hearing things, a fast scraping near his head. About two feet away from his face, a crumble of dirt fell away in the dimness, and then... he smelled wet dog!

Mud matted, eagerly digging, claws and paws finally broke through and a familiar impossible sight met Johnny's relieved eyes in the damp darkness.

"..Boot!.. How'd y- " he broke off, conscious of the risks of sound waves around the mummified dry TNT sticks squeezed against his face. ".. careful... careful..." he whispered, holding up hands to try to contain Boot's enthusiasm at reaching him. Johnny's gloves sank into Boot's coat as the dog wormed his whining way inside of his hole to sniff the boy's still face. His hands came away thick with fire retardant foam. ::Oh, this is ...just perfect. Fire foam!:: Gage thought happily. Johnny reached up to help Boot keep digging to let in more foam from his entry tunnel until it began to well up thickly. Johnny slipped on the oxygen mask from the tank he had saved and lowered the rim of his helmet to ward off the waves of foam starting to cascade down around them.

Boot's sad whines filled the hole when he realized that he was smelling death in Johnny's arms. The foam matted dog stopped digging and curled up in the space he had created near Johnny's face, sneezing mightily inside of their foam pile. He had decided that he wasn't going to leave Gage's side. Boot tiredly rested, his head tucked neatly underneath one of Johnny's arm pits so he kept some breathing room free of the surfactant that was softly billowing down from above and around them.

Slowly, one by one, Gage started grasping and gathering up only those dynamite sticks he knew were sitting completely underneath the foam layer. He began to drop them out of danger range into the lake below, from in between his wide spread, dangling feet.

He felt a sudden wave of dizziness sweep over him and a blinding headache began to pound. ::Sh*t, it's the nitroglycerin gel beads oozing out of the dynamite sticks. They're getting in contact with my skin. I'm absorbing it. My pressure's dropping just like it would for any angina patient chewing on a sublingual nitro tablet. Well, at least I can't go into shock now. My heart vessels are dilating nicely.::

Boot's constant soft whining turned into a half choking groan as a spasm jerked through the dog's body. ::Eoo. Same thing's happening to him.:: Johnny realized. ::Poor dog. I have no idea if nitro's a canine toxin.:: Johnny helped Boot clear the nasty tasting stuff out of his mouth with a clean wad of gauze as Boot started drooling and panting next to him. ::He was moving TNT getting down here? That's gonna stop right now.::

He decided to send Boot away. He took off his watch and placed it in Boot's mouth over his teeth.  
"Here, boy. Take this to Cap. I'm fine, see? You can leave now. Go show him, Boot. Don't worry about the boy. Nothing we can do. You're here for me. Got it? Now, go.. Back the way you came.  
Let them know you got to me and I'm okay. Good, boy. I'll follow you up.::

Johnny watched as Boot's weary, but wagging tail, disappeared back into the sunlight glowing foam, pouring out of the new hole. Then he bent to tie off his spare rope around the dead boy's chest so he would be able drag him along Boot's escape route, a few feet behind himself so he'd have some crawling room. ::That flowing foam should wash any sticky nitroglycerin off Boot's coat now that he's back under it. Too late for me, though. I don't have any fur. I gotta get out before I pass out from vaso dilation. There's enough gel residue soaking away around here to overdose on::

Thinking ahead, Johnny tied tight tourniquets around his upper arms and legs to keep his core pressure up to fight the side effects. ::Here we go.:: Johnny thought starting to work a slow careful way back up to the surface, worming his way around safely soggy dynamite sticks and mud clumps threatening to act like slippery soap beneath him. He began to use his turnout jacket's haligan tool like a climber's axe to keep from sliding backwards. As he expected, the gang had left his life line snubbed to an anchor but with the ability to get more slack so he could move and still have a life rope to catch him if he fell. ::I love Stoker's knots. Wish I was as good as he is with them.:: he grinned, pushing up through the river of foam. The light above him was grower brighter. ::Wow. Boot's long gone. He's probably already running across the parking lot.::

He felt his heart flutter inside of his chest for a moment and pushed it away with a deep breath from the medical oxygen tank. ::Uh, uh.. Not yet.:: he thought, squeezing his abdominal muscles while holding his breath to slow its rate down. His shortness of breath went away soon after he did the Valsalva trick. Johnny Gage resumed climbing.

His next hand grip clutched warm dried grass and it was then Gage knew that he was out of the hole. He heard Boot barking in the distance to his left while he sat up inside of the sunny foam layer undulating around him. He didn't trust standing up the way he felt. Johnny cut away the dead boy's rope from around himself and headed on hand and knees for the nearest tree, carefully checking for dynamite sticks appearing in the foam he was swiping away, while he crawled away from the cistern river bank. His oxygen tank ran out just as his glove reached the roots of an oak tree. He ripped off the oxygen mask and clawed a hole out of the foam glistening above his head, to the sky, so he could breathe. Then he pulled out his chrome silver Zippo cigarette lighter and lit the tree's peeling bark on fire. ::They'll see that smoke and this tree, flaming up easily. There's no way they won't know that I'm not exactly in this spot::

Thirty seconds later, Johnny felt a heavy bouquet of a fanning hose spray start showering over him, washing away the foam and soaking him thoroughly to the skin. ::Bye bye nitro issues. I'm being decontaminated.:: he thought giddily.

"Grab my hand!" shouted a voice above him. It was a firefighter from 127's stretched out on his belly on top of a horizontal aerial ladder stretched three feet above the ground over the foam pile.  
"I'll pull you up with me!"

Johnny saw the glove reaching down to him and he reached up. The view doubled and tripled,  
his visual blurry. "Took a nitro hit. Can't...focus." he gasped.

"No problem." And the firefighter hooked a shepard's crook behind Gage's collar and hoisted him up into the air on it long enough to grab his belt and haul him to the safety of the suspended ladder above the foam pond.

Gage felt himself hefted face down and firmly held between the rungs before the whole aerial began to move as Truck 127 backed swiftly away from the red zone.

"How are you doing?" the firefighter asked, hanging onto Johnny in a tight grip.

"Half ...*gasp*.. awake." Johnny whispered, keeping his eyes shut from the pounding in his head. "Where's Boot?"

"Who?" the man asked, carefully rolling Johnny over onto his back and into his lap.

"The dog. He got me outta there." Gage mumbled, feeling the firefighter place an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. He began to push it away. "Not yet. Listen to m-"

The firefighter knocked his hands away. "Shut up and breathe that in. You're blue. I haven't seen that dog since we laid the foam down. Why are you blue, paramedic?"

"Uh,... hypoperfusion from ...n-nitroglycerin...it's not-h.." Johnny guessed, weakily.

"Not hypothermia. Got it." The firefighter squeezed off an assisted series of breaths into Johnny's lungs with a trigger valve a few times before he got onto his radio. "Cap, he's conscious! Get that rescue squad over here! The boy's missing. The rope around Gage's second life belt has been cut."

##Copy that.## came the reply. ##We'll start an immediate search.##

Johnny could still hear Boot barking. Clear as a bell. "Go get the dog. Get him out of t-It's too late for the k-" His world went fuzzy and indistinct, like a dream, as they bounced on the ladder as the fire engine got adequate distance away from danger. Johnny's mumbling went unheard.

Puffs of mechanized pressured oxygen became his whole world as his heart began to pound from increasing hypoxia.

In a blur, Gage thought he saw Roy rushing towards him in Squad 51 from up the access road, screaming closer, with full lights and sirens on.

Back at Engine 51, Cap crowed happily. "They've got Gage!" he said, pulling his radio which had been set to monitor 127's truck-to-truck frequency, from his ear.

"How?" Marco startled.

"I don't know!" Hank said, smiling.

Marco and Stoker started kicking into high gear. Mike asked. "Did they get the boy?"

Hank frowned and finally shook his head. "They didn't mention finding him. Gage and the kid were separated somehow."

Chet strained his ears at a sound, out of the rescue usual. "That's Boot." he said, pointing out to the foam field. "Hear him barking?"

"Yeah, I wonder why he doesn't-" Lopez puzzled, turning to look in the same direction.

Bark! said Boot, leaping up high so his head cleared the top surface of the foam retardant's rising layer.

"There he is, guys. Whew! He was just trying to find us. Here, boy! We're over here!" Kelly shouted, gesturing so the dog could see him.

Bark! came another excited yap from the dog. A little closer. In his mouth, Chet saw the blue color of a boy's shoe, and a dusky tinted bare leg.

"Oh, my G*d. Is he dragging the kid?" Stoker asked, horrified. "It's not safe. He's gonna hit a-"

Bark! Bar- A colossal boom blossomed like a fiery orange and white cancer from the hill as a sudden explosion ripped apart the middle of the foam riddled meadow. It was followed by a cascade of concussions as buried TNT nearby was jarred and triggered into self destructing too, caused by the first explosion of dynamite on the surface.

Firefighters everywhere, dove under their trucks for cover as heavy clods of earth, rock and boulders showered down around them in a debris mushroom a hundred feet wide. The earth shook as centuries old hell fire was released from the old mine in one explosion after another.

Chet didn't see the fire or the flying debris expanding over the red zone. He could only recall the sight of just moments ago, when his eyes had connected with Boot's happy ones, because the dog had thought he was successfully rescuing another one.

Photo: Cap on the walkie talkie near crew applying fire foam.

Photo: Johnny reaching a victim tied to a rope.

Photo: Stoker reaching out a ladder to you.

Photo: Firefighters flinching in a massive explosion.

Photo: Chet Kelly looking stunned in a close up.

Photo: Truck 127 stretching out it's aerial ladder horizontally.

Photo: Boot, peeking out over an edge, between Johnny's legs.


	5. Chapter 5

Roy flinched as the explosions in the mine began in earnest as he drove to meet the fleeing rescue team coming directly at him, in the green zone.

Thump!

::Oh, G*d!:: He let out an inarticulate shout of suprise when a still recognizable bloody severed tail landed on the windshield. A swipe of the automatic wipers dislodged it a few seconds later, to fall away and off the glass, so he could see again. :: I-I'm so, so sorry, pal.:: "You died in that? D*mn it to H*ll!" he screamed out loud. Then tears came. :: You did it, boy. I hope you knew you mattered one last time, Boot. You got to him down there, all by yourself, and you pulled it off. You saved Johnny. You were such a good, good dog. We're all gonna miss y-.:: his reeling thoughts erupted.

"I am so f*cking proud of you, you c-crazy *ss mutt." he whispered over the sound of the sirens.

Then there was no time to mourn.

DeSoto angled Squad 51 perpendicular when he parked, using its bulk as a concussive barrier between 127's landed bucket and the most direct line of sight to the new fire zone. "On the ground. Get him flat. Fast as you can!" he shouted to 127's crew who were unloading Johnny by his life belt and rope from their emergency ladder. "I've got a replacement resuscitator already set up. Is he pulling any of that oxygen in on his own?"

"He's got reduced ventilatory effort, but yeah." reported the lieutenant.  
"Lost consciousness about twenty seconds ago."

Hurrying, the crew got Gage laid out with his head tipped fully back to keep his airway open while they worked with his inhalations to maintain regular chest rises using their demand valve.

"51? An ambulance is a minute out. What do you think's wrong with your man?" their crew leader engine driver asked. "My men said they couldn't find any injuries on him. He said something but damned if we could figure it out. He's still cyanotic."

DeSoto looked up from where he was rapidly setting up the biophone and its antennae. "He got into some decaying dynamite residue. Wash him down asap. He's suffering acute vasodilatation from it."

"That I know. Right." said the leader, accepting the clothes shears DeSoto tossed him. Swiftly, the firefighters cut off Johnny's sticky, gore stained uniform clothes and gear and in seconds, they started handle brush scrubbing Johnny's skin clean aggressively under a firm reel line's fanning spray. "What about this chilling? Our water's like pure ice."

"Won't hurt him. He's already hypovolemic. That cold might reduce some of his protean ICP that's making him black out." Roy said, hurrying to hail Rampart. "Rampart, this is Squad 51 on boosted band. Do you copy?"

The hospital's open line just hissed without a reply.

DeSoto bent by Johnny's ear while he waited to connect with a nurse or doctor. "You're safe. You're out of there, Junior. Hold on for us." He looked up and waved to Cap in an urgent swipe to rush Engine 51 in.  
"Rampart this is County 51. How do you read?" he said, switching to a secondary channel in a test. The amber light on the biophone radio still glowed steady in a confirmed received tie in. "Come on. Come on."

He threw the unasnwered phone down when Gage began seizuring. 127's firefighters tipped him onto his side as Johnny vomited, only briefly interrupting his decomtamination shower.

"Watch his head!" DeSoto cautioned, using a tarp to keep from getting any of the explosive gel on his gloves and turnout coat. He helped the firefighters clear out Johnny's mouth with a suctioning wand.  
The convulsion soon ended.

They picked Gage up and moved him out of the dirty water puddle they had created, to a dry spot on the level dirt, before starting in again with their long handled scrub brushes.

The crew man delivering assisting breaths, kept tabs on the poisoned paramedic's carotid pulse. "He's getting bradycardic." he told Roy. "It's 46."

"Noted. When your decon's done, dry him off and bundle him well in blankets. Leave out his arms for I.V.s."

DeSoto turned his back to the fire roiling out of the cistern fissure and new blast crater so that it wouldn't distract him as he got back on the biophone. Already he could hear the additional alarm tones alerting new engine companies, over his H.T., that Cap had called in to manage the newly born wildfire spreading downwind and into the wildlife refuge area.

Hank was the first one out of the truck as he and the rest of the gang rushed to his side. "Roy?"

"He's dyspneic! Get me the I.V. and drug boxes from the squad. Defib's right there. Patch him in as soon as you can." Roy told him. "Rampart, this is Rescue 5-1. Do you read me?" he urged, clamping down on his frustration at the delay of their response, so that it didn't leak out into the biophone's receiver.

##51, this is Dr. Early. I read you loud and clear. Go ahead with your transmission. 39's had a cardiac arrest.##

"Code I. Near respiratory arrest. Confirmed environmental nitroglycerin exposure. Pulse 49, unconscious, now post-ictal from an active seizure, on assisted 100% O2. He is undergoing current flush water decontamination."

##All of those symptoms sound like they're due to arterial hypovolemia from an overdose of nitrates through the skin. Epinephrine is contraindicated in this case. Central volume expansion to offset his deflated vital signs will be critical until the half life of the nitroglycerin, still in his liver,  
has passed. This boosting should start to take effect about 2 to 3 minutes after that shower's done, once established. Use Normal Saline as fast as you can push it. Use two large bore needles into the cubital fossa area on both arms. Those vessels most likely haven't collapsed yet. Add a third into a jugular if you have access. Oh, and 51, let me know the color of his blood when you get a vein. There's a complication,.. a methemoglobinema that causes an impairment of oxygen delivery in the body following nitrate exposure if it's been extremely high.##

"Rampart would you repeat that last order?" DeSoto said, watching Chet and Marco set up three I.V. bags and infusion lines.

##Is his blood brown or red when exposed to the air, 51?## asked Early.

"Stand by." Roy glanced at Hank. "Cap, prick his finger with your knife. Then show me the site. Quickly."

Cap didn't hesitate or question the bizarre treatment. He nicked the pad of Gage's closest thumb, avoiding nerves and bone. "It's dark, almost like chocolate, Roy."

DeSoto handed Hank a dressing to bind up the wound. "Rampart, it's brown and staying that color."

Joe Early leaned into the microphone at the base station. "The hypoxia you are noting will get worse, before it gets better. Be aggressive on any resuscitation efforts. Titrate 1 to 2 mg per kg of body weight of methylene blue into your best wide open I.V. It should counteract any more of that blood cell binding in under ten minutes. Keep using pure oxygen, even after he wakes up. His blood will still be partially unable to transfer O2 for a few hours after we stop the process. He may become confused, or combative on you. Watch for heart block. I want a new vitals set in five minutes."

Roy repeated back the medical orders. Then he abandoned the phone and kicked Johnny's care plan into high gear.

Half way to Rampart, in a speeding Mayfair, Johnny opened his eyes, which began to meet Roy's, from the cocoon of heated blankets that had been nested around him. "I feel like sh*t, Roy." he finally said, through his non-rebreather oxygen mask.

"That's an improvement, believe it or not. How's your head? Your EKG looks great." Roy smiled tiredly, reaching for the BP cuff to take another reading for the chart. "Ah. Don't move." DeSoto said, placing a hand on his shoulder.  
"I had to bolus stick your neck."

Gage grunted his dislike of needles out loud and long. "My jugular? The worst possible I.V. choice ever made, Roy." he said stiffly, keeping his neck the same way. Then he answered the question."7 of 10. Out of... breath."

"Working on that. It's chemical hypoxia. You're the perfect candidate for a transfusion once we get to Rampart."

Gage groaned his unhappiness again, even longer than the first time.

Roy didn't change his relieved expression. "Yep. More needles. I could always knock you out with a paralytic and intubate you to get recovery happening a little faster from your perspective."

"No... way in H*ll." Gage shivered.

Roy grinned and turned up the heat inside of the ambulance. "You found one, and got out of it."

"Yeah, I remember that. And... Wait a minute. Where's Boot? He always stays with anybody he gets out. That's the one sure thing about him.  
Or, don't tell me." he smiled weakily. "Or did he just run away again once things were over?"

Roy actually looked away, and stopped pumping up the BP cuff. Then he finally spoke. "He's gone, Johnny. H-He didn't make it out."

"What?" Gage gaped in a gasp. "He was killed? I do ...think I... remember a fire. I... Oh, man. Can anybody guess what happened?"

"He went back for the dead boy. Stoker seems to think a TNT bundle was bumped when Boot tried to drag him out of the foam while he was still blinded by the bubbles."

"Oh, Boot. Why did you have to try and do that?" Johnny sighed.  
"We were right there and moving in. You didn't deserve to die. Not like-." Still body weak, he couldn't form tears. But he wanted to.

"It was in his blood. In his soul, if there is such a thing for a dog."  
DeSoto couldn't meet his partner's shocked eyes. "Earned that halo a thousand times over."

Four days had passed since the cistern rescue call. The wildfire the self destructing mine had started, had recently shown that it would be with them as a continual engaged fire department battle, for most of the summer.

Chet Kelly walked into the rec room past the kitchen and found Johnny sitting slumped on the couch, resting a small rectangular cigar box, about the size of a dress tie, on his chest. He seemed lost in thought. And that made Kelly automatically curious. "What's that, Johnny? Cookies from your aunt?" he grinned, putting a fake hungry look onto his face.

"It's what's left of Boot." he replied morosely.

Chet immediately started gagging when he figured it out. "Oh, Gage! Why?! That's disgusting. What's the matter with you? Why don't you just bury the thing and be done with it, like decent folk."

"U.S.A.R. recovered it. It's sealed. It doesn't smell. I'm.. still trying to decide what I want to do about him. I owe him... my life, Chet. Can't you wrap your grossed out little brain around that concept? Or is it a little too deep for you to comprehend?"

Chet didn't take offense. He actually joined Gage on the couch right next to Johnny, and then they both began to stare at the box together. Kelly threw up a hand. "We could always see if we could arrange for a fire department style funeral."

"For a dog? Give me a break. The chief would never go for that.  
He'd think we were both nuts and send us to counseling for PTSD."

"Oh. He would. Skip that idea." Chet gingerly took the box out of Gage's troubled fingers and reverently placed it onto his own slumped belly. He just barely stopped himself,... from actually petting it. "We could always.. bury it like one of Boot's bones."

Johnny shot to his feet, and snatched the box away from Chet protectively. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Chet."

"Why? Nothing wrong with the suggestion, Johnny. Boot did that all the time with the dead squirrels and birds he always found around the station. If Boot were here, he'd probably like that idea." Kelly reasoned calmly.

"Sounds perfectly logical to me." said Mike Stoker, entering and overhearing. Cap and Marco were on his heels.

"How about cremation? That's clean." Marco shrugged.

"He burned enough." Johnny growled.

"All right. All right. Don't get your overalls in a kink." Cap huffed. "You can't keep hiding that in your locker, Gage.  
One of the other shifts might find it and freak out."

"He belonged here, Cap. I can't just... take him home. I'd feel funny about doing that. That's kinda sick." Johnny replied.

"And hanging onto dead dog parts at work, isn't?" Hank countered,  
gesturing at the box in Johnny's hands.

"Well..."

Roy intercepted the two of them and took custody of Boot's box.  
"I've got the perfect solution. My wife came up with a plan to start a fundraiser to dedicate a memorial to all the children who've died in the cistern park. It's partly to get the powers that be to solve the problem by getting more public aware of it.  
She said Boot's tail could be interred inside of the statue and be remembered that way, in the place where he made his final rescue.  
I'm sure the rest of the guys in the other stations would go for this in a big way, too. We could collect the names of everyone Boot helped and combine those on the memorial, to make it less sad of a topic, for visitors."

The gang waited on pins and needles for Johnny's reply.  
They literally were frozen in their shoes at the sight of his building tears.

Finally, Gage let out a huge, sad sigh, and spoke.  
"I was his last rescue save, Roy." said Johnny, his eyes finally drying up. "I'd be honored to become part of it."

"Well." Cap said, placing a comforting hand on Johnny's shoulder. "That settles that. Not...seeming to be undecorous but,.. please store Boot's box outside somewhere until these final things get panned out. It's gonna take a while. Up high, perhaps, like in the hose tower, so the rats can't get at it."

Gage acted startled. "K-kay. Sorry, Cap, I.. forgot about refuge regulations."

"Gage, he's not trash. I wasn't referring to that one."

"I'll go store it." said Stoker, taking the box from Roy. "It'll be fine wrapped up in a tarp. I'll warn the other shifts to be careful around it so they don't knock it down."

Johnny's eyes follow the box the whole way out the door, but he didn't follow the engineer.

He slumped back on the couch, finding that his hands were restless without anything to hold. "I still owe him, guys."

"How can you ever repay an act like that back?" Roy asked, gently.

"I don't know,.. I... Maybe I ... Hey, should I try finding another dog who can fill Boot's boots?" he said, finally smiling a little. "Then perhaps we might stop missing him so much."

The rest of the gang started smiling, all at once.

"I think that's a fabulous idea, Gage. We'll help you look."  
nodded a beaming Hank.


	6. Chapter 6

*************************************************  
From: patti keiper pattik1  
Sent: Monday, May 28th, 2018 7:39 AM Subject: Plunk

Joanne DeSoto was laughing over tuna salad sandwiches and coffee with Dixie McCall in the hospital cafeteria.

"So there he was, looking like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar, after he found out that I had mowed the lawn around him while he took a nap in the living room chair." giggled the petite teacher with a curly shoulder length bob.

McCall chuckled. "Roy's certainly not one to go against women's lib.  
But chivalry in him is most certainly not dead. Being macho and being able to handle everything all in one is all the rage these days with most guys I know."

"I can't understand it. He was so tired after working that cistern mine wildfire that started near your place, all weekend, on his normal days off. Of course I'm going to step up to the plate about doing everything around the house. And I told him so, too. Dixie, I actually made him take his apron off." Joanne said seriously, biting her lip.

"Oh yeah? And how did he react to that?" Dixie asked, leaning in confidentially.

"Like a wounded puppy."

"Oh, no." Dixie smiled, conmiserating. "Well, Roy just turned thirty. Maybe that's a bit like how turning forty effects us women. When you burn your candle at both ends, you start to feel like a wet dish rag more and more whenever you try it. Must be especially noticeable when you're already a hard working firefighter."

"Really? Do you think that's possible? Wow, I'll just take your word for it. I haven't experienced that effect. I'm..." she broke off politely.

"Still young?" the head nurse shrugged off the reference. "Count your blessings that you don't have to cover any gray yet like I do. So the lawn's neat and dishes are already done. So what? You both should still feel like you're fully accomplished and caught up, which is normally not true for about 99% of the rest of us unmarrieds. Tell Roy I told you so. Maybe he'll relax a little more without feeling so guilty about it."

A dimming of the sun made both women look up from their meals. The smoke plume from the fire was spreading and beginning to track out over the ocean.

Joanne shivered. "Did you know it's already spread over 100,000 acres this month. Even with mutual aid fire departments from New Mexico and Northern California working with all of ours, nobody's making any headway in containing any of it yet."

"I'm not surprised. Some head honcho somewhere decided that doing controlled burns in the foothills once every ten years was a lot better than forking out the bucks for doing one every spring. Have you noticed how fast surrounding communities are popping up all around us?  
Hard to be a good forester when everybody's over protective of that multi-  
million dollar mountain view out everybody's window. Trees are popular now. That's why I bought a condo and moved where I did so I'd be near a grove of rainbow eucalyptus trees located on a ridge. I wanted to be closer to the overwintering monarch butterflies that come there every year."

"Oh, yeah? How's that working out for you?" Joanne sighed, sipping her coffee absently.

"Smoke's getting bad at night. Kel and I can't even open our windows any more to cool off while we're sleeping." McCall sighed. "And it's no picnic returning home at midnight after work most days, because so many out of staters are driving in taking a gander at the fiery freakshow burning alongside the blacked out freeway. I've added an extra forty five minutes to my commute time, one way."

"Ooo. You can always both come stay with Roy and I for a while. We've plenty of space. The kids are away all of the time with their sports and summer jobs these days. I hardly see them except at mealtimes."

"I thank you for the offer but I don't quite feel like a refugee yet.  
Kel and I are both smokers so a little more blowing in off the mountains can't make that much more of a difference quite yet. D*mned Hollywood. Every day, I blame them for having made cigarettes look so glamorous in all of the movies."

"Ever going to try to quit, Dixie?"

"Someday. Maybe. Probably when work finally makes gum chewing legal, so I can start chomping my way into a pair of dentures instead."

Joanne giggled and pushed her empty plate aside.

"So, now where were we? My brain goes out the window whenever I'm hungry and haven't been eating fast enough to compensate." Dixie said,  
folding her sandwich in half and hunting around for a narrow place to take her first bite of it.

"Eat. I'll talk." Mrs. DeSoto huffed good naturedly. "The fundraiser's set for minigolf games at Murphy's Arcade and Golf Course at the new pier. I struck up a deal with the business owner. He's brand new and hasn't had his grand opening yet. The place is ours for three whole days until the 8th when he goes live."

"Smart man. He'll get free publicity with the fire department and press doing that. And afterwards, as the official sponsor of the Cistern Park Memorial Project." McCall nodded in appreciation.

"All we have to do in return now is... hire a band for our event." said Joanne, flinching at the daunting task placed before them.

"Oh. Do we have anybody lined up who's a musician and can play?"

"Roy says he knows two people he can think of already who fit the bill." Joanne said excitedly. "Just wait until you find out who they are."

Johnny Gage and Chet Kelly burst into the rec room at Station 51 carrying their mutual guitars, sparkling with energy.

Johnny and Chet took possession of the whole couch, moving their instruments,  
and Henry the basset, out of the way.

"Sorry, Henry." said the curly haired Irish firefighter. "But you've got your dog house to live in, that you never use." Chet said, pointing to the wooden one gathering dust underneath the freshly sketched up chalkboard.

The rest of the gang looked up appreciatively from their taco dinners at the kitchen table.

Marco grinned, reaching for the extra extra hot sauce. "So what's the latest?  
Battle of the banjos?" he chuckled, meeting the eyes of the others in amusement.

"This is going to be family fare." Gage told him, strumming a few bars of a bright,  
happy diddle. "It's kids we're going to be honoring at the fundraiser, with a lot of grieving parents to soothe. I can't see nabbing any donations from the public if we don't cheer them up, while were at it."

"What can be played that won't sound hokey or stuffy, while mini golfing?" Mike Stoker asked.

"This." crowed Kelly, and with a nod, both he and Johnny broke out into a Jimmy Buffet tune in a quick silver, lilting duet of harmony and hand slap percussion.

Gage grinned happily as he and Chet strummed out the song briskly. "In a pair of matching Hawaiian shirts, what can go wrong playing our set with this kind of stuff?" he said.

Chet looked up from his note picking fingers. "It's snappy, happy and jiving. I mean,  
who doesn't like Jimmy Buffet?"

Cap raised his lone hand.

Johnny sniffed. "Well, you're not going to be there, you have to work Saturday at Headquarters,  
because of the fire."

"Ah, the joys of upper level rank. Not. I hate brainstorming strategies in a think tank with a passion. Everybody always thinks their ideas are the best one for tackling any issues. I can't get even a single word in, edgewise." Stanley sighed, not looking up from his newspaper.  
"That whole meeting's going to be a complete waste of my valuable weekend off time."

"You could always bust back down to regular firefighter, Cap. Then those weekends full of crisis alerts become mandatory work shifts until further notice." DeSoto said while sipping coffee. His voice cracked at the end.

Hank looked up seriously at his paramedic in an evaluating way. "Just how tired are you getting, Roy? Don't lie to your captain, or I'll kick your butt and then some."

Johnny stopped playing his guitar and went straightfaced, his fun time over. "He's not exhausted quite yet, but he'll get there in the next day or two." Gage betrayed.  
"He hasn't gotten any nights off since the explosion. Me? I'm fine. I had two days in the hospital to rest up."

"Roy?" Cap said, lowering his eyes and frowning.

DeSoto looked up from a taco that just dumped out of his muscle weak hands. He rolled his eyes. "Okay, yeah, I guess I'm a little bushed."

"A lot bushed." Johnny corrected, getting up and handing DeSoto a napkin from a dispenser that was out of his partner's reach. "He's already wearing his second uniform shirt of the day."

Lopez raised his eyebrows. "What happened to his first one?"

"I got shaving cream smeared all over it from the wind. I forgot that I hadn't actually ... shaved off any face hair yet, after dashing out on that last squad call we had." Roy confessed. "Johnny had to toss a towel at me."

"Oh, yeah?" Hank mumbled. "Well I'm going to do the same thing, Roy. Right now." he said, getting up to go use the payphone to call L.A. "I'm calling in Brice. When he gets here, go home. Don't come back until 0600 Sunday. Is that clear? Next time you crash into a subjective wall, I want you to tell me right away. This wildfire isn't one you can auto-pilot through in less than shipshod shape. Firefighters get themselves killed that way. And it's usually long timers exactly like the two of us, who manage to do it, by getting cocky and misjudging slowly aging muscles."

Roy didn't say anything and finally started scooping up his messy taco, with a fork.  
"32 is not old." he grumbled.

"It's half again more than 21. Don't be stupid." Johnny chided. "Your peak is over. And at 26, I'm beginning the short slide down from mine. It's nothing to be ashamed about.  
Forty hours a week is an honest firefighter's schedule. Just like normal human beings last time I checked."

Roy didn't rise to meet Johnny's gentle ribbing.

Cap became further convinced that he had an overly tired man.  
"Battalion knows we're short handed this summer. Brush details on the Mine Fire are really putting a crimp on all of our urban coverages." Cap shared. "I'm sorry they lost track of how high your OT hours were actually sitting. My instant override, will fix that, uh, that's if your family budget's not in any hot water."

"We're fine, Cap. I just knee jerked because my schedule filled up just like everybody else's, because of the mandatory all call work clause applied last week." DeSoto reassured, propping his chin into an elbow propped hand.

"You're one year away from a veteran firefighter status on rotation. Then you won't have to response to one, Roy." Hank offered.

"In five months, six days, and thirteen hours, Cap. I do realize I'm slowing down guys. I'm not that blind yet not to see it."

"Neither are we." said Mike Stoker. "We've got your back, Roy. One person can't be a Superman all of the time."

Photo: Dixie and Joanne sitting in a cafeteria at Rampart.

Photo: A fire on a hillside, billowing smoke.

Photo: Animated sparkles above and below the memorie of children, watching Dix and Joanne.

Photo: Engine 51 on the driveway of Station 51.

Photo: Chet and Gage playing guitar

Photo: Mike Stoker chewing out a sweaty, grinning Roy.

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. **Location to the Complete Current Story


	7. Chapter 7

****************************************************  
From: patti keiper pattik1  
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2018 4:45 PM Subject: Dominoes

Dr. Kel Brackett was taking a breather from the world, hiding in his office, in the dark.

He sighed heavily as he rubbed his face and then leaned against his palms in a short rest. The pile of patient charts on his desk was shoulder high in front of him.  
"Fine time to go on vacation, Dr. Morton. It's almost the fourth of July.  
Why didn't I join you?" he chuckled, grimacing at the cold coffee he first swirled then sipped from his earliest morning mug.

Shoving the folder stack away, he slid the phone closer and then dialed home for the first time in half a day. "Hey, Dix." he greeted with a false beaming smile on his face solely for the benefit of the empty room when she picked up.

##Is the whole world tired today? You know you're not fooling me, Kel.  
Your voice is never bright.## McCall pegged.

"It's the fire." he confessed. "I've got a mountain of charts that should have gone to a team of pulmonary docs who are supposed to handle smog and smoke inhalation related cases. But no,.. we got them, because the air's really thick today and flaring up emergency COPD and asthma cases." he groused.  
"So we got them. We're the closest facility."

##It's got to be crazy busy. You're snarly. I'm so sorry.## Dixie conmiserated.  
## Need me to-##

"No, you're not coming in. Joe and I'll plow through the rest of the shift. If we have to, we'll start transferring the overflow to other hospitals not downwind of the plume. "

##You can always chain lock the doors or break out a bicarb needle. That'll clear the waiting room out in a hurry.## Dixie sighed, only half joking.

"Oh, haha. Even the gangs are absent today. Did you enjoy lunch?"

##Yeah, it's been a long time since I've hung out with any of the firefighter wives.  
Joanne DeSoto was helping me plan out my fundraiser for the Cistern Memorial.##

Kel Brackett frowned and let out a sympathetic breath. "What caused the Mine Fire anyway? I haven't had time to read the papers."

##Old dynamite buried in the dirt. 51 was there rescuing the latest cistern victim when they blew. It killed Boot, their dog, who was trying to rescue a boy he didn't know was dead. I was told a foam field interfered with his sense of smell.##

"Oh, that's ...that's too bad. Even I've heard about Boot from other firefighters who had a chance to hang out and work with him."

##He was sweet. I used to stop by the station just to say hello, face to face. If any dog deserved a permanent home, it was him. You know... ## she said thoughtfully, ##...that home, I thought, could have been ours, Kel. I was working on officially adopting him the week he died. We were becoming close friends, without even speaking.##

Dr. Brackett smiled. "I didn't know that. Would he have even stayed?"

##Probably not. But at least he would have known that another door was always open.##

"He sure had a lot of those, Dixie."

##Wait, no what? Really?##

"Yeah. I've heard that from at least a dozen different paramedics. They used to banter Boot stories in the coffee lounge all the time. I just.. never listened in past the dog's name. I was always coming and going too fast."

##It's not right, Kel.##

"What isn't?"

##That a dog who saved everybody and never asked for anything in return, got killed.  
It was because of the ignorance of careless people, that he was. It was so g*d d*mned preventable.##

"Dixie...Don't go beating yourself up. Hindsight is always twenty twenty when looking into the past. It's a trap." Dr. Brackett warned.

McCall was silent for a long time. ##I know. I've.. got too much empathy.##

"That's why you're a d*mned good nurse and my girlfriend."  
Brackett was gracious. He didn't remark on the sudden tearful sniffle that he heard over the line.

##I love you, Kel.##

"I love you, too, Dixie. You're my angel of light. See you at midnight for dinner?" he chuckled.

##It's chicken soup and quiche tonight. I'm feeling lazy.##

"Sounds divine. I'm sure it'll taste heavenly."

##I'll polish my halo.##

Reluctantly, the two of them disconnected with a click.

Break time was instantly over and the weight of his responsibilies for the day began to make Brackett's whole body ache again in one big throb. "Time to start delegating." he whispered, trading the desk phone for a white wall one which called the hospital administrative offices wing. "Fifty new beds is far too much to handle."

The sun had set and Roy had gone home on Cap's order, when the tones at Station 51 sounded.

"That's us, Gage." Brice said, dropping his newspaper onto the kitchen table.

"How can you tell?" Johnny asked, rushing after him, peeling off an apron he had been using to help Chet make some brownies. Already, the perfume of rich chocolate baking filled the air, hiding the fire smoke tang coming in from the outside through miniscule cracks in the surrounding kitchen brickwork.

"Those sound clear without any static. Hear that? Call's close." Craig said,  
as they jogged to the apparatus bay.

Gage nodded and drew out his fire fighter's turncoat and helmet from a side squad door, to put on. "What do you want to do?"

##Squad 51. Adult male down, trouble breathing. At Bethseda Nursing Home.  
1515 Catrina Lane. 1515 Catrina Lane. Cross street, Avalon. Time out. 2025.##

"I'll drive." offered Brice. "You've been on duty all day."

"Thanks, Cap." Johnny said as Hank wrote down the address and handed them the slip of paper.

"We'll try not to eat them all." he smirked.

"Better not." Johnny groused at him. "Leave at least half a tray!"

"That doesn't make any sense. They're only two of you." Hank huffed in a tease and disappeared.  
Brice's acceleration onto the street drowned out Johnny's protest comeback.

-  
Two blocks away from their destination, Gage had finished counting slips and adding them to their vehicle log notebook. "This is number 19."

"Nineteenth call today? That's light." Brice remarked.

"No, nineteenth difficultly breathing call. We've had 32 runs in twelve hours so far."

"Ouch. How's our O2 doing?"

"Topped off. We're trading out bottles with all of the police departments because they've got more free time on their hands to go get them refilled."

"Smart."

"That was Roy's idea. He's seen more firestorm seasons than I have."

Craig grunted. "Nine more than me."

Johnny frowned at their call address, squinting at the writing. "Bethseda. Isn't this the state home for folks with no family?"

"Yeah. All widows or widowers with no ties and poor financial situations."  
Brice shared. "But it's nicely run on tax payer money."

"That helps." Gage grinned. "Our patient will be hydrated and well fed.  
And if we're lucky, he'll be clean." Johnny nodded.

"Bathing's twice a day, unless there's doctor's orders for a once a day bed bath around dressings or other invasive daily care equipment."  
Craig recited.

"You remembered that about this nursing home?"

"Of course. There's only ten Homes to memorize in your station's service area. You've easy landmarks to recall." Brice shrugged.

"The pier, the Arco refinery complex, Rampart, three schools, five churches, a half block of warehouses, six state canyonlands, eight city parks and.. how many nursing homes?" Johnny ticked off on his fingers.

"Ten."

"I'll... try to add those." Gage mumbled apologetically.

"No need. That's why we write things down on paper."

Johnny chuckled. "I think only Mike Stoker has a map brain like you do. He's constantly on the big one in the garage."

"We quiz each other." Brice nodded.

"Oh."

"We're here." Craig said, pulling up Squad 51 neatly at the curbside of a tidy white washed single story facility surrounded by pleasant gardens and a water fountain. The fountain was bone dry in accordance to emergency city water rationing while the wild fire was still burning.

"Let's bring everything." Gage said as he pulled out the Datascope,  
the rolling resuscitator, and drug box.

Brice carried the biophone, the I.V. box and a spare sheet in case their patient wasn't in a room with a bed and needed lifting to a more accessible open area for treatment.

"Hello!" Johnny shouted as they hurried through the front nurses reception area which had been abandoned because of the emergency call. Gage could see a green flashing light on a panel marked "Living Room". "Common lounge." he said, tossing his head at the call light.

Brice made note of that mentally and headed off that way, still announcing their presence. "Los Angeles County Fire Department. Anybody here?!"

They burst into a cozy, sunny lobby area that had a blaring T.V. showing the Mine Fire helicopter footage. The two paramedics saw a huddle of folks around a frail, old, blue lipped man wrapped up and almost lost in a big ivory knit sweater, half slumped against a foot stool. It was their patient who replied out loud. "Just people... *gasp*... Getting old." he rasped.

"Now Mr. Petersen. I told you to stop talking and to save your breath."  
said a young, casually dressed nurse wearing a stethoscope and a name tag. It was she who was struggling to hold the man upright so he could breathe a little better. "Hiya fellas. Thanks for coming so fast."

Craig Brice helped her reposition Petersen right where he was on the floor into a sitting position and opened his shirt.

Johnny drew out a non-rebreather mask and connected it to a top level flow. "Does he have a respiratory drive?"

"Yes. Low carbon dioxide won't put him into arrest. This is cancer. He's only got one lung. Another resident forgot about the air quality alert and opened up the patio wide. We shut the doors as soon as we smell it, but the brush fire smoke filled the room before our ventilation fans could suck it out again."

Brice began listening to the old man's wheezing chest with a drum. "Are any other residents effected?"

"Oh.. I didn't think of that.. Uh..." said the young woman.

An older care attendant dressed in a t-shirt and name tag answered. "No. I checked. It's just Mr. Petersen. He's still about a month away from entering..." he broke off, self conscious. "Well..."

"..hospice.." panted the old man under Johnny's hands. "You can say it, son. I know I'm dying. It's... not a secret but a blessing and... a date I'm looking forward to. I'm ... tired of being sick."

"Okay, okay.. We heard that. Now just take it easy so you don't feel like you're suffocating so much." Gage told him gently."Just keep breathing this in, nice and slow." he said,  
pressing the oxygen mask over Petersen's nose and mouth. He used his other hand to push away Petersen's as the old man vaguely panicked and tried to pull it off again. "Just a few more seconds. Give the oxygen a chance to start working."

"Ah..." he groaned, a sour sweat coating his skin. Then his lips began to turn rosy pink from dusky purple as he obeyed Johnny's instructions.

Brice noted the fresh surgical scar left on the man's chest where surgeons had removed the tumorous lung earlier in the year. "Are you in any pain?"

Petersen's shook his head faintly, gripping Johnny's hands over his face tightly with his own as he lay still and concentrated on just breathing. "Not any more... There's nerve...damage."

"Give me his history." Brice ordered the nurse. "Any DNR orders?"

"Not yet. Mr. Petersen's quite the fighter." said the young nurse with an affectionate smile for her client as she tenderly wiped away perspiration from his face and eyes with a soft cloth. "He wants to make it to spring.."

"...so I can die in the garden.." puffed the old man. "Pretty enough place, by the fountain out there.." he chuckled wetly. "It's my last wish. To be with the butterflies when I..." he broke off when suddenly, he went unconscious.

"Mr. Petersen?..." Gage called out, tipping back his head to keep an open airway for the oxygen mask. "Can you hear me? Mr. Peter-" he shifted a hand to perform a sternal rub to see how far down he had gone. "Brice. No reaction."

Craig nodded, his eyes sharing that a heartbeat was still present, even and strong at a pulse he was feeling at a carotid. "I'll call Rampart. Let's keep him upright against the foot rest. He doesn't need to be intubated."

"I'll hook up an EKG so we can see what else is going on." Johnny added.

"They'll want a twelve lead over Lead II."

"Yep. It'll be Dr. Brackett. He's the in-charge tonight."

One of the nurses set an open folder down next to Brice and Johnny so they could read Mr. Petersen's patient record. It included vitals sets every six hours since dawn that day. It listed off current medications and allergies and when the cancer metasticized.

Craig Brice rattled off the data he had obtained during his examination to his partner. "Pulse is 110, regular. Left lung is crackly, but not wet at all. No peripheral edema in the limbs. BP is 86 by palpation. There's no skin tenting. Respirations are.."

"22 and shallow with improving light central core cyanosis." Johnny completed as he snatched up and read Mr. Petersen's medical information. "His last oral intake was at two, a grilled hotdog and an ice tea. Last med was just two Tylenol for a mild headache." he grinned. "Mr. Petersen, wow, your lunch sounded like it was real tasty. A lot better than mine. I had just boring tacos."

Mr. Petersen finger twitched and the corners of his mouth turned up faintly.

"He's coming out of it." Gage grinned, "He probably just got a little tired after taking in that few minutes of smoke."

"He was badly frightened when things turned stuffy." said the older nurse. "His stamina's not the best."

"Does he faint often?" Craig asked, setting up the biophone for his hail.

"Not at all. Now's the first time since he arrived to stay with us."

"Okay." Then Brice turned to the biophone. "Rampart this is Squad 51. How do you read?"

-  
Photo: Dixie at her apartment, dressed in pink, by a glowing lamp.

Photo: Dr. Brackett in his office on the phone.

Photo: Brice driving Squad 51 with Johnny

Photo: An old man in a nursing home, in breathing distress.

Photo: A close up of the biophone and the Datascope defibrillator.


	8. Chapter 8

***************************************************  
From: patti keiper pattik1  
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 6:22 PM Subject: Melting Point

At Rampart, the hospital was still bustling activity in the E.R. But his eyes noted immediately the flashing incoming call light. Concentration time for him was still hard won, counted in seconds for each file in his arms. Kel bought more by closing the glass alcove door behind him in the paramedic base station room and setting his casework onto a nearby table swiftly.

Dr. Brackett replied in moments. "Unit calling in. Repeat your last transmission."

Craig Brice cleared his throat and collected his thoughts into condensed form. ##This is Squad 51 with a respiratory distressed 78 year old orally fed male with a history of cancer related pneumonectomy in March. On sixteen liters of O2, with unresolved, fluctuating awarenes levels. His trigger was the outside air." the paramedic shrugged,  
gesturing at the brush fire smoke hazing up the nursing home's rec room windows.

"Understood. What are his vitals?"

Brice told him and then added. ##We have twelve lead telemetry ready.##

"Send it." Brackett answered, flipping on the paper feed to the biocom demodulation console.

##10-4, Rampart.## said Craig as he pointed to Gage to switch on their feed.

Kel nodded as a strip began appearing. "I am receiving. Send two minutes of EKG.  
Then start an I.V. Normal Saline 1000 ml at a rate of 20cc's per hour. Give him 2 mgs atropine IV to dry out any pulmonary edema you note in that lung. I'll bet he has a ton. If he needs intubation on the trip in, be aware of tracheal deviations due to the changes that were made by surgeons and alter your technique accordingly using an EOA, not an E.T. Transport as soon as possible. I'll have a respiratory oncologist specialist standing by."

Craig repeated back his care orders out loud so Johnny could hear them again in double confirmation. Then he said, ## Our E.T.A. to the hospital will be fifteen minutes precisely, Rampart.##

"We'll be ready for him promptly." answered Kel, marvelling yet again at Brice's uncanny ability to time future events not yet arrived.

Mr. Petersen shook his head weakily from inside of his oxygen mask gratefully.  
"Appreciate the ...special.." he gasped.

"Don't talk." said the older nurse kindly. "They know." she smiled.

Five minutes later and hooked into multiple lines, the tired senior was transferred onto a Mayfair crew's cot, by Gage and the EMTs and was bundled up in sheets to start soaking up his cold sweat. The sick man grinned faintly and reached up to his caretaker's hand. "I'll be back, Bet. Keep that garden bench warm for me."

"Sure." she nodded, relief warring with worry in her eyes, but not in her voice.

Craig nipped that in the butt. "There's no artifact cardiac wise and his breathing volume's still improving with just this minimal intervention." he winked at her. "His will be an overnight stay only I suspect."

"He's always right." added Johnny seriously, looking up from the gear he was packing away.

"Thank you. Both of you." said the staff each, in turn. "He's a very dear favorite. We'll be missing him all night. His life's stories, that he shares with everybody, are truly wonderful."

"Can't wait to hear some of those on the way in." Johnny winked. "Are you up for some serious storytelling, Mr. Petersen?"

"In a heartbeat. I've got plenty of those left." he answered, already sounding stronger.

Joanne DeSoto was bustling around in her kitchen, crisp apron on and hair neatly tucked into a cooking bun. "White? Or red?" she asked her husband,  
who was sprawled out onto the living room couch, unsuccessfully eyeing up entries for pet shelters in the Yellow Pages.

"Red. It's beef, right?"

"Flank steak." she replied, her head buried in the oven as she basted the roast in au jus with a long spoon. "And shittake mushrooms."

"Joanne. Those are expensive. You didn't have to." DeSoto looked up, the contentment he was struggling to find, instantly leaving.

"This is why I'm serving wine with dinner." She said primly, holding up a bottle of Malbec. "Roy, we're still in budget, even with your enforced break here happening. I'm eternally grateful to your captain for sending your rear back home."  
she glared in mock. "Dixie told me the Mine Fire's going last all summer before it's even half contained so there's no use in your working so hard, to put it out.  
I want a fire of another kind started right after dinner, my love." she whispered romantically, parking herself on his lap and pulling away the phone book.  
She kissed his lips delicately to which he only half heartedly responded.

"I'm sorry, Joanne. That sounds like a fabulous idea with the kids gone."  
he finally smiled.

"Umm hmmm." Joanne murmured, straightening up Roy's hair around his delightful ears. "I arranged double sleep overs at their friends' houses a week ago. I knew you were getting really tired even then when you left for work last Thursday without taking a single sip of your morning coffee.  
So what are you doing now? You're supposed to be relaxing." she said to him, forehead to forehead in their embrace.

"It's Johnny."

Joanne laughed and got up to go back to the stove. "It's always about Johnny.  
That's why he's a regular member of the family these days. What about our engaging Mr. Gage?"

"He's.. well.. he hasn't been sleeping. I've heard him tossing and turning, not resting, mumbling about Boot when he's half under. The sooner we find another dog for the station, or for him, the better. Or he's going to end up like me before too long and get put on light leave. He's a bachelor, he can't afford to be off work like we can." Roy told her. "So I've been reading up on all the pounds." DeSoto reached for the directory again and flipped it open to the page he had been staring at. "But I'm stuck when I finally call them.  
I don't want to ask about finding another dog that looks like Boot. That would be unfair to the dog, with us expecting him or her to be like he was.  
Do I ask about a puppy? I mean, who's free enough with anybody's schedule to handle all the paper training and the whole nine yards of raising a young dog up to adulthood?"

"Collectively, aren't all of you firefighters able to do that? Isn't that why your dogs are brought into the station to begin with? Those lucky canines are never alone.  
Not with shifts on call 24/7 around the clock around them." Joanne shrugged, tasting some mashed potatoes scooped onto her finger thoughtfully.

"But what kind of dog? A dog is the only thing that will make Johnny begin to feel right again about losing Boot the way we lost him." Roy puzzled, almost worn to the core.

"Husband. This is simple as pie. Quit trying to be a master chef." she said,  
drawing him into her eyes once again. "We let a dog, choose him. Isn't that how Boot found all of you in the first place back in the day?"

Roy began smiling, for real, at last, as he buried his face in his wife's hair gratefully. "It was. He saved a young biker. That's how we first met."

"Then let's let a dog, save Johnny. We'll take him around the pounds on his next day off, before he gets on the back of one of those horses of his, and tries to run away again."

"He has?"

"Yep. You can tell by the way he walks. He gets bow legged, Roy,  
when he's been riding too much and for too long."

"Ah, Joanne, you'd make a good paramedic. You notice everything about people. I must be blind. I missed that about him."

"No, you've just been...distracted. By me." she giggled, pulling him down onto the couch in the beginning of a tumble in the hay. "By design."

"Is the stove off?" DeSoto fussed, trying not to grin as he attended Joanne tenderly with his hands and lips.

"Yes, but the heat's more than boiling." she laughed.

"Hot d*mn." said Chet as he and the rest of the gang eyeballed all the news on the television about the Mine Fire and their lack of progress. "I thought we were making headway." he complained, shoving aside the spicy chili popcorn that Marco had whipped up for everybody.

Cap sighed, ignoring the broadcasts as he buried himself in a newspaper in his easy chair. "Not with the Santa Anas stirring up. They're early this year."

Stoker groaned. "I hate those winds. I can't calculate water flow from our hoselines with respect to evaporation rates in the air when they're blowing. It's really bad for fanning sprays."

"The sky's big, Mr. Stoker. And summer's already dry as a bone as it is. Equations like that are impossible. That's why we use helicopter and sky crane water drops.  
Flooding's the only answer and workable solution to a fire that big in those conditions."  
Brice agreed.

Hank grew serious and set down his paper. "But the water's running out. Just got the report. Soon, on order of the governor, the fire department will be forced to use seawater if any more of the city falls under risk of burning from sparks."

"Salting the land?" Gage exasperated. "That'll never fly with city hall. Even to save their own buildings. Salt in dirt's practically forever, Cap. It's deadly poison to local plants and trees."

"I know. I know. Tell that to the government." Cap shrugged. "When's the last time you've heard anything environmental issue from the little guys carrying an impact on them? They haven't even gotten their act together long enough to start building desalinization plants for people's drinking water. Our population's tripling, so we're getting thirsty as a result, firefighting wise. Hydrants with low pressure, air backups, gas leaks, are becoming more and more commonplace. This might be the summer where everything comes to a crisis point on that angle. The other chiefs and I all feel that this year, all of that, will happen."

"What can we do about it, Cap?" asked Lopez.

"Absolutely nothing, pal. And that's the part that really sticks in my craw. We'll have to just wait it out, work it best we can, and see how the whole mess pans out in the end."  
Hank said seriously. Frustrated, he tossed his newspaper to the floor and flipped over onto his side in the chair, to get lost in his vaguely felt, helpless thoughts.

The rest of the gang turned back to the T.V. in an attempt to face the reality that was rapidly spinning out of their control.

It was full night at Rampart.

Morton, Dixie and Dr. Early were taking a coffee break when a loud noise and bright orange tinged light, erupting from the direction of the burning foothills, lit up their window.

Photo: Gage, crouched and holding Boot's face in his hand.

Photo: A black and white photo of a brush fire enveloping a freeway.

Photo: Morton, Dixie and Early looking out the hospital lounge window, in shock.

Photo: A closeup of Joanne DeSoto, smiling in amusement.

Photo: A California creek and waterfall, in the sun.

***This current episode is not yet complete.  
***Visit the fiction websites below to read more stories.  
***Sister site on Facebook, is building an online archive of Emergency.


	9. Chapter 9

*************************************************************  
From: patti keiper pattik1  
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2019 12:42 PM Subject: Pressure Point

Dr. Early's hand snatched out and captured Dixie's mug to steady it before it jolted out of her grip when the nurse jumped in startlement.

"Whoa!" said McCall. "Can this fire get any creepier, fellas? My nerves are shot."

Mike Morton just grinned from the bite he was taking out of a triple decker BLT sandwich. "That's the coffee talking, Dix. Your sixth cup today." he mumbled.

McCall glared at him wide eyed. "You've been counting them?!"

Dr. Morton shrugged, chipmunk cheeked with his late night snack. "I count everybody's. I'm just wired that way. Pops into my brain automatically."

Dixie glowered into the depths of her freshly empty mug. "I wish the caffeine would. Then I wouldn't have to waste so much time drinking it."

"That eidetic memory is why he's a good doctor, Dixie." Joe reminded her.

"Then give him the nurse's schedule to do in my place. I'm ripping my hair out over all of these request/change forms. I'm so much better with patient charts and.. and..and.. confirming M.D. orders." she exasperated. "Floating calendars always drive me crazy!"

"Give it here. I'll do it." Mike gestured, stuffing the last of his sandwich into his mouth.  
"Come on, now.." he chuckled when she resisted. "Double check my case load stack's. I know you know how I work orders even better than I do."

That remark earned Morton at least a quarter of a smile. McCall began to bulldog frown but the round rimmed eyeglassed doctor took none of that. "Nah uh. We're trading. Or do you value that headache you've been trying to hide all day, more than taking a break from it?"

Joe chortled. "Mmmm. I stand corrected. Mike's an expert doctor. Better belly up, Dix, before he pulls an M.D. string and orders a full neuro on you."

"Ah, doctors!.. Okay, it's a deal." she finally huffed, standing up and then working up the courage to peek through the lounge's venetian blinds at the fiery conflagration outside that was still disturbing their usual sense of coffee lounge peace. "Where's a good friendly paramedic when you want to chat over a cuppa? It's all a battlezone in here."

Joe sobered. "They're all out there. Fighting that." he gestured to the glowing window.

McCall abandoned her coffee mug. "It's summers like this where I really start to get depressed about anybody who has to be a firefighter." She sighed and eyed up her hands' red skin. They were chapped from too many burn care prep washes.

"We'll save all we can." Mike comforted her softly. "It's all we can do for them when the ones who need it, finally get hauled in here."

-  
Craig Brice was driving, following the nursing home call. The spectacled paramedic said something aloud the third time Johnny Gage reached for the radio mic on the dash clip, and didn't pick it up. "Don't want to call us in as available yet, Gage?" he asked.

"Huh? Wha- oh." Johnny replied as he realized how much closer they were to the station than the last time he was aware of it. "Sorry, Brice. I guess I'm still tired. It's been an all nighter for me since Roy got sent home last night."

Craig smiled kindly. "We won't get a call for hours. Not now. It's rush hour. People will be concentrating on getting to work or school for a while. And the seniors are all thinking about lunch already instead of about all of their aches and pains. We're good here."

Johnny dropped his head and groaned quietly. "I knew that. I did." He un-spigotted the mic and spoke into it on auto-pilot. "S-Squad 51, available."

##Squad 51 at 0710. ## came L.A.'s replyback.

Brice frowned at Johnny. "You're taking a nap or I'm pulling regulations on you like a-"

"...bookworm. Yeah, I know. I won't fight you on that. Pillow hugging's all I can think about right now." Gage shared.

Craig minced at his partner's unusual honesty, as he navigated through their last intersection home. He took in a deep breath, and offered some of the same. "I miss Boot, too." he said, keeping his eyes on the road respectfully.

Johnny looked at Brice sharply, not quite believing his ears. His mouth worked. But the new silence between them stretched, against his will.

It wasn't until the station bay door was opening for them did Brice speak again. "The guys at Ten's are thinking about pooling up cash and getting a... a new... dog."

Gage's face clammed up and he remained unmoving in his seat. He studied the fingers in his lap until they were fully parked. He made no reach for his door handle afterwards. "For me, it's too soon. I... feel that... pretty strongly."

Brice killed the squad's engine and set the ignition key onto the dash methodically. "Have you figured out why?"

"Nah." Johnny sighed. "If I knew the answer to that one, I'd probably be sleeping little better at night."

Craig wobbled his head a second time, understanding a bit more. He folded his hands together over the steering wheel and kept his gaze neutral as he dove into uncharted waters. "It's not P.T.S.D. He wasn't a firefighter crewperson, or a patient. Yet..."

Gage completed Brice's line of logic. "...all of the grief's still very real. " his voice caught in his throat. "Oh, Brice. I feel like I owe Boot, something awful! I can't help wondering if this is some kind of flawed thinking or not." he said, pulling his emotions back into a firm line.

Brice grew quiet. "Is an impression of debt owing a part of survivor's guilt? I have no idea. I'm a paramedic, not a pyschiatrist. Is it abnormal? No. I'd feel exactly the same way if I had been in your shoes. Boot took the equivalent of a grenade for that dead kid he found, Johnny. It doesn't matter that it was pointless how he died. How those two went wasn't preventable for either one of them. Not in the slightest, soo...how about this? Why not.. fix something that is a current issue somewhere, that already bugs the hell out of everybody who's fire department? It's what Boot always did."

Relief spread out on Johnny's face like a water fan over a flash over and both of his amber eyes glistened with unbidden tears which he did not let go. "That's.. all true. I'll think on it."

Craig bit his lip and met Gage squarely in the eye as he reached out and grasped his shoulder. "It might be the right answer, but... I'm not .. positive it is, Gage. Don't take it at its full face value."

Johnny smiled and returned a brief squeeze over Craig's grip in thanks. "You? Being uncertain? This is honestly.. uh,... refreshing, Brice. If that idea isn't the solution it's at least most of it. I sincerely thank you for that. I really needed to hear a whole butt ton of sensibility. And you just gave me some. Come on. Let's go eat. I'm more hungry now than I am sleepy." Gage jumped out of the squad and closed the door behind him eagerly.

"Good." Craig said, safely out of earshot. He gathered up all of their run sheets and notes for the log. Brice secretly let his eyes smile once he was alone again. "That's a healthier response to have. Wow." he marvelled. "It worked on him? Usually I suck at mental bandaids. Hmmm." he grunted, quirking up his lip. He was well pleased with the outcome of being able to smooth a little rough road. Then he rose and followed Johnny into the kitchen.

Photo: Dixie looking sad at a table.

Photo: Dr. Morton and Joe comforting someone.

Photo: A large distant brush fire in the foothills.

Photo: Johnny acknowledging L.A. at night.

Photo: Brice smiling by the squad.

Photo: Boot, wrestling with a pillow.

***This current episode is not yet complete.  
***Visit the fiction websites below to read more stories.  
***Sister site on Facebook, is building an online archive of Emergency.

***************************************************************************************  



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